Hello friends! Today I thought I would chat about the different products I am using to get my planted aquarium cycled and healthy. If you haven't seen my two videos about it, I am starting a 10 gallon tank with the intention to get a betta fish and a nerite snail (and possibly some tetras later, but not sure on that; maybe). I kept bettas 20+ years ago when I didn't know any better but to keep them in a small bowl (the pet store guy told me they lived in puddles and that was fine and I believed him; actual advice is a minimum of 5 gallons for a betta fish, 10 is better).
I also didn't have aquarium plants in those little bowls, so this is the first time I am setting up a real tank and the first time I am trying to grow plants in it, too!
In the tank so far I have 5 sticks of lucky bamboo, 2 pothos, and several spider plant babies; all of these need their roots in the water and their leaves sticking out. I have the lucky bamboo held in little pots with pebbles so that they stay together; the large pothos is just hanging out the side of the tank; the little pothos is currently chilling on top of one of the bamboo pots, and the spider plants are not-so-successfully floating in a cookie cutter (I need to figure a better way to keep them upright because they keep flopping over into the water).
For submerged plants, I have one Anubias, one Amazon Sword, and three Marimo moss balls. There will be floating plants (red root floaters) soon, but I ordered them in the mail and they haven't gotten here yet.
For fertilizers, I have root tabs buried in the substrate around the Amazon Sword since it is a heavy root feeder, and I just started using API Leaf Zone, a liquid fertilizer, for the Anubias. The Sword melted when I added it to the tank (many aquarium plants are grown not fully submerged in water, so when you submerge them, they "melt" which means that their leaves literally melt off like mush, but it should grow back ...hopefully? Soon?), so right now it's just a nub. The Anubias wasn't submerged, either (I bought it in a tube from Petco), but it thankfully hasn't melted. It has recently developed some holes in the leaves though, and when I looked them up it looks like that might be a nutrition deficiency, specifically likely potassium, which Leaf Zone has. So hopefully it helps that and helps all the plants to grow!
I am currently cycling the tank, which means I am waiting for the nitrogen cycle to establish itself so that the benficial bacteria in the tank as well as the plants can process the fish/snail waste and I won't have to be changing water out everyday. One of the signs that your tank is cycled (in addition to testing the water parameters, more on that later) is that the plants are growing, because it means they are using up that waste to grow. So far the pothos roots have grown a lot, but not anything else as far as I can tell.
I'm using test strips to check water parameters. Ammonia is a separate test from everything else (which I didn't realize until I bought the 6-in-1 ones and went ...hey, why isn't there any ammonia on here? LOL. It's a learning process!). Finally today I saw that my cycle had started again based on the results! Hooray!!
When I first started, it looked like the cycle had started in week two, but then it totally stalled for a couple of weeks and I consistently had high ammonia and no nitrites or nitrates. Basically, fish poop makes ammonia, and the beneficial bacteria eat that and turn it into nitrite, and then other beneficial bacteria eat that and turn it into nitrate (and plants eat all three of those). So your tank is "cycled" (in addition to the sign that plants are growing) when you have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and 25 or less nitrates. At that point, it is safe to add your fish to the tank (also, if your other parameters are okay, like pH and so on; different animals like different ranges of those so it's important to research what parameters are healthy for your particular fish/snails/shrimp)!
You'll still have to do some partial water changes (see my video about doing that), but maybe once a week or every two weeks, depending on how efficient your plants are at processing the waste in your tank, instead of constantly so your fish doesn't die from swimming around in their own toxic waste. Some people who have really heavily planted tanks don't do any water changes at all and their water parameters are fine because they have it so balanced with the different plants, substrates, and animals in there that it processes itself just fine. I don't know if I'll ever get there, but I think that's really cool.
Dechlorinator is an important product to use in any tank, whether you have live plants or not, because city water (tho you should use it on well water too because that could have chlorine naturally, they say) is treated with chlorine to kill any harmful bacteria in it. Chlorine is toxic to your fish (very, very toxic), so you need to add some drops of this to get rid of the chlorine in the water and make it safe for your fish friends!
I also keep a thermometer in my fish tank to make sure the water is a safe temperature. Many people add heaters to their tanks, but I don't have to because I keep my apartment warm enough that it stays the right temperature for bettas naturally without one. I like my apartment to be around 80 degrees Fahrenheit (about 27 Celcius), and so the water sits at about 78 degrees. But when you add more water after a water change or because you are topping up, that can change the temperature (as well as if something happens like the heat goes out), so it's a good idea to have a thermometer so you can check and make sure everything is okay for your fish.
I didn't get into foods in this post, though I did buy some already, because this is more about stuff for the water parameters and plants. Maybe I'll do a post about foods once I've brought home my fish and snail friends! :)
Thanks for reading and have a great day, everyone!